0:00 The Vice President of the United States owns a cemetery. It's about a half acre in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. When he first made some money, he tracked down his 80-year-old cousin and bought it from him. He mentioned it in his acceptance speech in the 2024 Republican National Convention. Even now, with the Secret Service detail and his schedule measured in minutes, he tries to get back there at least once a year. He does not go there to lay flowers, though. He goes there to talk to the people buried in it. And I'm going to read you his own words because I don't want you to take my summary of them verbatim. This is J.D. Vance in his new book, Communion. I walk in that ancient plot of land and speak to people long dead, some of them gone before my grandmother was even born.
0:54 I visited that cemetery before every major life decision. From proposing to Ursa to running for Senate. And then he tells you exactly how it works. He says, I talk to my grandparents and my great-grandparents like patron saints of the episodes and emotions we all experience in the course of life. I talk to Mama when I need strength or focus and to Papa when I need wisdom. I talk to Mama's mother, Mama Blanton, when I need strength or focus and to Papa when I need wisdom. I talk to Mama when I need kindness or empathy. And to her father, Papa Blaine, whom I've never met, when I need toughness. Four dead people, four assigned specialties, strength, wisdom, kindness, and toughness. One of them he never met while that man was alive. And he calls that place, and this is his phrase, not mine, the outdoor temple of the dead.
1:59 And he says he bought it. Partly so that when he is buried in it, his own children have somewhere to come and, I quote, speak to their ancestors. Now, most people hear that and file it under grief. A man missing his grandmother, and if that were all it was, then I would leave it alone because grief is not something that I even want to tackle. I have no interest in scolding. I have no interest in scolding anybody for standing at a grave site. But that is not all this is, because a few pages later, he tells you what he believes actually happens when he speaks. Now here's the sentence. Everything else in this study hangs on it.
2:53 Memory eternal is the promise that when you speak to the dead, they say something back, even if only as a vapor from the past. Remember that. Remember that. Remember that. Remember that. Remember that. They say something back. They say something back. He softens it a little bit by saying even if only as a vapor. But he leaves himself an exit here. But he did not write that he speaks and there is silence. He did not write that he speaks and God hears. He wrote that when you speak to the dead, the dead answer you. And that is not a private interpretation. That is a doctrine that a lot of people believe, and he knows it, because he defends it in print. Let's go back to the beginning in the introduction of his same book.
3:47 He describes the one Catholic practice that his Protestant friends can't stomach. And watch the words that he picks to describe their objection. He says, some Protestant friends really don't like the Catholic practice of praying to saints. They're fine. They're not asking a living person to say a prayer, or please pray for my mother. She's sick and needs all the help she can get. But they draw the line at consulting the dead people. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners. And now at the hour of our death, he said. Consulting dead people, not venerating of the saints, not requesting intercession. He named it the way the Protestant names it. Plainly, with no cushion on it.
4:37 And then he answered them. He says, fair enough, maybe they're right, I think they're wrong, but I'm not here to settle this argument. Now those are three sentences, and the middle one tells you that the consulting the dead is legitimate, and the Protestants who refuse it are mistaken. That is the second highest office in the United States, in print, in 2026, telling you this. So where does this man get that? He wasn't raised in it. I mean, after all, he was an atheist for about a decade. Somebody taught him this. He tells you who it was. There's a priest in the book who hands him the whole theology in one sentence, and Vance quotes it directly. He says, one of the wounds of sin is the veil of death, which violently separates us.
5:28 Faith in Christ involves trust. His victory over death will be true for us too. That the chains of communion will continue to bind us, even after death. There's the architecture. Notice it's a veil, and it's not a wall. Something thin, something that sounds passed through. And on the other side of it, the dead, conscious, aware, listening, and still bound to you by chains that death could not cut? The graveside conversations are just practice that are built on top of that one claim. And here is where I want to end. I want to end. I want to end. I want to slow way down. Because this is not where the error starts. This is where it surfaces. It starts much earlier, and it starts gently. And in his case, it starts when he was seven years old, at a funeral.
6:23 He'd come home from burying his great uncle, and he asked his grandmother an honest question as a child. How can a person go to heaven when their body is still in a box on the ground? And the two of them kind of worked it out together. The best illustration, a family that loves guns—remember, his grandmother has 17 of them—could reach for. He asked, so the soul is like a bullet, and the body is like the casing, and God shoots off the bullet to heaven so that the casing gets trapped here on earth? And Mama, who he says had no patience for anything on earth except for questions about the Lord, thought about it carefully. Because she did not want to leave. She did not want to lead the boy astray. And she said, well, I guess it's like that. She was not a theologian, obviously. She was a grandmother doing her best with what she had been handed. And I want to be honest with you, that is what most sincere Christians in this country believe about this.
7:27 Not the whole bullet and casing scenario, but the idea that you go shoot straight to heaven conscious when you die. It is what is said at nearly every funeral. Well, most funerals. Some say, actually, you rest in peace. Others say you are watching from heaven, even in the bathroom. And once you accept it, everything Vance does at the cemetery follows logically. I mean, follow this logic for a second. If the real you leaves your body still awake, then the dead are somewhere. If the dead are somewhere and not aware, then of course you can speak to them. And if you can speak to them, then why on earth would they not be able to answer you? The entire structure rests on that one load-bearing sentence of where you are when you're dead. So let's go and find where that sentence came from, because it's a real eye-opener.
8:21 Because this whole idea is much older than Mamaw. It's older than Rome. It's older than the pyramids. It was spoken in a garden by a serpent to a woman, and it was the first recorded lie in the history of the world. Go back to Genesis 2, verse 17. God says, But the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. And Genesis 3, verse 4 says, And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die. That's it. That's the whole thing. Six words. God said death is death. Serpent said death is not death. Said the wages of sin is death. And the serpent said, You will go on. You will continue.
9:11 You will not really end. And every version of the immortal soul that has ever been taught in any religion on this planet is that sentence with better grammar. The bullet and the casing is the serpent's sentence with a hunter's metaphor. Ye shall not surely die. Once you see that, you understand why this doctrine matters so much. much more than a debate about funerals. It is not a side issue. It is the first lie, and it has never been retired because it still works. So let's put the serpent's claim next to the word of God and see which one holds up. What is man? Well, Genesis 2 chapter 7 says, and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and a man became a living soul. Not received a soul, became a soul. He became one. The dust plus breath equals a living soul. That is addition, not installation. There is no third component slipped in when God wasn't looking, and when the breath goes back, you don't have a soul flying loose conscious somewhere. You have the equation running backwards.
10:32 Exactly. The same way Ecclesiastes 12 describes it. The dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit, the breath, returns to God who gave it. And the souls were not immortal. Ezekiel chapter 18 verse 4, behold, all souls are mine, and the souls of the Father. So also the soul of the Son is mine, and the soul that sins, it shall die. So the soul that sinneth, it shall die. That single line, it shall not be fitted any inside the bullet and the casing, no matter how you turn it. So who is immortal? Well, Paul answers it in 1 Timothy 6. It says in verse 16, speaking of Christ, who only has immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto. Only. One being in this universe possesses immortality in himself, and it is not you, and it is not me, and it is not mamaw. Then how do we get it? Well, Paul tells us, and he tells us precisely when we get it. 1 Corinthians 15 verse 51 says, behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump.
11:55 For the last trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall, we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. Must put on. Must. Which means we don't currently have it on right now, and there's no immortality in us. It happens at the last trumpet, not at the gravesite. That's the difference between the gospel and the serpent. The serpent says that you already have eternal life inside you. You must look within. The gospel says that eternal life is a gift, and exists outside you with Jesus Christ, God of the universe. It is the Son, and you must receive it on resurrection morning. So what are the dead doing right now? Well, scripture is not vague about this. It's almost blunt. Ecclesiastes chapter 9 verse 5 says, for the living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything. Neither have they any more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Chapter 6 says, Also their loved, their hatred, their envy, is now perished. Neither have they any more portion forever in anything that is done under the sun. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might. For there is no work, no device, no knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave which thou goest.
13:25 And Psalms 146 verse 4 says, his breath goes forth. He returns to his earth, and in that very day his thoughts perish. In that very day, not slowly, not partially, not except for vapor. And then Job chapter 14. This is an exciting one, because verse 21 says, which it answers that whole Kentucky cemetery directly. Speaking of a man who has died, his sons come to honor, and he knoweth it not. And they are brought low, but he persists. He knoweth it not. J.D. Vance goes to that mountainside before every major decision of his life, proposing to his wife, running for Senate, becoming Vice President of the United States. And the word of God says, the dead do not know when their sons rise, and do not know when the sons fall. If you want it from the mouth of Jesus, John chapter 11, Lazarus has been dead.
14:35 For four days. And the Lord tells the disciples, our friend Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I may wake him up out of a sleep. So they misunderstood this. They didn't understand the figure of speech that he was dropping. So he explicitly says it. He says, then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. So Jesus calls death a sleep, probably because that's exactly what it looks like and feels like. Instantly, out instantly, back awake, and going again. That is Christ's own words for it. And notice what Lazarus did not do when he came out of the tomb. He didn't describe heaven. He didn't deliver a message from the other side. Four days had gone, and he had nothing to report, because there was nothing to report. He had been asleep. And if that isn't enough, listen to Peter preaching the very first Christian sermon. Acts 2. On the day of Pentecost, filled with the Holy Ghost, speaking of the greatest saint in history, Israel's history. Verse 29, he says, men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, King David, and that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulcher, his grave, is with us unto this day. Verse 34, for David is not ascended into the heavens, a man after God's own heart, still in his grave, a thousand years on. And Peter says, so everyone out loud can hear it, as an argument to them, he says he's not there. And Hebrews chapter 11 says the same thing about all of them. So after listening to the heroes of faith in this chapter, verse 39 says, and all of these, all these heroes, all these people that we talk about, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise, what promise? Going to heaven. God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. What's he saying here? Well, they without us, nobody goes ahead of us. Nobody has collected it yet. There are a few first fruits, of course, like Enoch.
17:05 There are a few that have, have gone to heaven, like Moses. But the majority of us, like these saints that you're just talking about, they haven't gone before us. We all wait for the same trumpet, and we all rise together. That is not a sad doctrine. That is the most equal thing God could ever arrange. So now we have a problem, and it's the sharpest question in this study, because it's something we're really going to have to think about. At the dead, no, not anything. J.D. Vance says something answered them back. And then something is answering. Absolutely. And the Bible is not silent about what that is. Isaiah chapter 8, verse 19 says, and when they shall say unto you, seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and have, and unto wizards, and that peep and mutter, should not the people seek unto their God? So that is the entire practice in five words. And God asks it as an accusation. And then verse 20, which is the test that settles this, and every other question like it, to the law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. Not if it feels holy, not if it confronts you, not if it's sincere, not if it makes beautiful chapter in a book. To the law and to the testimony.
18:36 And God did not, that's under a minor preference. Deuteronomy chapter 18, verse 10 through 12 says, there shall not be found among you anyone that maketh his son or daughter to pass through the fire, or that uses divination, or that is an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with, with what? With familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. All these things are an abomination of the Lord. So what did it say there? It said a consulter with spirits, a necromancer. That word simply means one who inquires of the dead, and is listed in the same sentence with the child sacrifice. Leviticus 19, verse 31 adds, regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards to be defiled by them. Now, somebody's going to say, well, you're accusing Vice President Vance of witchcraft, and I'm not. That's not what I'm doing at all. Instead, I want to tell you about a king, because scripture has already recorded what happens when a leader of a nation, a man who serves God for most of his life, goes, goes looking for answers in dead people that he loved and trusted. First Samuel 28, chapter 28 says, Saul was terrified. The Philistines are amassed against him, and he prays and gets nothing, because he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he has not been serving God. He doesn't have that relationship with God.
20:13 Not by dreams, he doesn't get anything, not by the urim, and he doesn't have any of his prophet friends with him anymore to inquire. Not by prophets. And in his deception, he does one thing that he himself had made illegal in Israel. He puts on a disguise, and he goes at night to a woman at the town of Endor, who had a familiar spirit. And he says, bring me up Samuel. Now, Samuel was his mentor, the prophet who anointed him, the one voice he had always been able to trust. And here's the detail everyone skips. He got an answer. Something came up. According to the witch, it looked like Samuel. It spoke like Samuel. It knew things that Samuel had not told the woman, the witch. It told him the truth about the battle coming, because a lie always works best. And Saul fell upon his face and worshipped, whatever it was. The very next day, he was killed. Why? Well, because the entity had given him a prophecy saying that he would die, and it looked as if that he would be taken by the other enemies. So he killed himself. And that proves that that prophecy was wrong. But that's not the point of this presentation. And a chronicler gives us heaven's verdict on 1 Chronicles 10, verse 13. It says, So Saul died for his transgressions, which he committed against the Lord, even against the word of the Lord, which he kept not, and also for asking counsel of one that had familiar spirit, to inquire of it. Now, understand what this means. Saul's sin was not that he got nothing. Saul's sin was that he got something.
22:10 Saul was dead, and the dead know not anything. So the thing that came up out of the ground at Endor and wore a prophet's face was not Samuel. Paul tells us what it was. It was in 2 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 14. It says, And nor marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Not a monster. Light. Warmth. Familiarity. Familiar spirit. The face of Satan. Somebody you love. And this is exactly why the enemy has kept the first lie in service for 6,000 years. Because the immortality of the soul is not the deception itself. It is the platform the deception stands on. If the dead are alive, then the door is open. And anything at all can walk through wearing that face that you trust. Founder of our church, Ellen White, gave an entire chapter in the book, The Great Convergence. And she titled it, Can Our Dead Speak to Us? And in that chapter, she wrote this, Many will be confronted by the spirits of devils, personating beloved ones, relatives, or friends, and declaring the most dangerous heresies. These visitants will appeal to our tenderest sympathies and will work miracles to sustain their pretensions. We must be prepared to withstand them with the Bible truth, that the dead know not anything.
23:40 And that they who thus appear are the spirits of devils. They're going to appear to our tenderest sympathies. Not our pride, not our lust, not our greed. Our tenderest sympathies. The softest parts of us. The parts that misses somebody. And she wrote something else that describes this book better than I or anything I could ever have said about it. It is true that spiritualism is now changing its form. And that spiritualism is now changing its form. And that spiritualism is now revealing some of the more objectionable features. It's assuming a Christian disguise. A Christian disguise. It's a Christian disguise. Not a seance in the dark. Not a crystal ball. A grieving man at a family gravesite quoting scripture on his way to Catholic mass using the word communion. J.D. Vance is not a cynic. He is not a fraud. He's a man of faith. I can see it all throughout his book. Read that book and you will find a man who has been hit very hard repeatedly. His grandmother's death is what broke his faith to begin with. And he tells you so. He sat by his father's bedside while his father, who had refused chemotherapy and printed out Bible verses about healing, had gone to faith seminars about healing. And he asked the room, doesn't J.D. know that God will heal me? And Vance records the answers in five of the, in the flattest words in the whole book. He says, God did not heal him.
25:16 Then his closest friend in politics was assassinated. And he flew out to bring the body home. And he says that for months after, he kept picking up the phone to call him and hanging up before the first ring. That is not a man dabbling with a cult. That is a man who misses people. That is exactly why this deception is built. It does not come at you as a lie. It comes at you as a comfort. It arrives with a face of a person that you would give anything to hear from one more time. Nobody in history was ever seduced by a doctrine that felt cold. But comfort is not the test. Isaiah gives us the test. And here is what I would want to say to him today and to anybody who has ever stood, over a grave, and wished the ground would answer. You are not being offered less than you'd hope for.
26:21 You are being offered infinitely more. Paul wrote to a grieving church in 1 Thessalonians 4.13. But I would not have you be ignorant, brethren, concerning them that sleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. Now he did not tell them. Their loved ones were already with them. He told them where the hope actually is. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, with the trump of God. And the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another, with these words. So comfort people with these words, not with the idea that you can talk to your friends in the grave or your family, but that you will see them again at the next trump. Jesus said it himself in John chapter 5 verse 28. Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth. All that are in the graves shall hear his voice. Not a whisper that you have to lean or strain.
27:42 In order to catch on a quiet morning in Kentucky. His voice, loud enough to reach into the ground. And Revelation 14 13 says, blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth. Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors. Rest. That is the mercy in this doctrine. And people miss it. Your loved ones did not watch you fall apart. At a funeral. They did not stand by helpless through the hard years. They did not see the things you would not want them to see. They rested. And the very next thing they will know is the face of Jesus Christ coming in the clouds. Vance goes to a half acre in Kentucky to speak to his ancestors in hopes for a vapor from the past. Scripture offers him a morning when they speak back with their own voice. They do not stand by helpless through the hard years. They do not do anything. They stand by themselves. They stand by themselves. They stand by their own mouth. Out their own bodies. Alive. In a hole. And never leave again. And I want to close by putting one more piece of this book on the table. Because if you saw our study on Sunday Laws, you already have half this picture. In the same book J.D. Vance writes, I am, and I am only quoting him exactly, I have supported blue laws, state laws, and shut down businesses on certain days. Like Thanksgiving.
29:12 These days are sacred and everyone ought to be able to participate in them equally. To hold the two together in one hand for a second. In one book from one man at the second highest office in the United States, a defense of consulting the dead and a defense of the state of enforcing sacred days. More than a century ago, this exact same pairing was described in advance and it was not describing two unrelated problems. It was described as one strategy. Through two great errors, the immortality of the soul and Sunday sacredness, Satan will bring the people under his deception. While the former lays the foundation for spiritualism, the latter creates a bond of sympathy with Rome. And the Protestants of the United States. First and foremost in stretching their hands across the gulf to grasp the hands of spiritualism and they will reach over the abyss to clasp the hands with the Roman power.
30:18 And under the influence of this threefold union, this country will follow in the footsteps of Rome in trampling on the rights of conscience. Two great errors, not two great mistakes made independently by confused people. Two great errors. Two errors doing two jobs. One lays the foundation for spiritualism, the other one builds a bond with Rome. And look at what they have in common, because this is the heart of it. One of them says that God does not get to define your death. The other says God does not get to define your day of rest. One overturns his authority over life, the other overturns his authority over time. And both of them replace the other. Thus saith the Lord, with what the church and the culture have always said instead.
31:14 That is the same rebellion running on two tracks. And the Revelation tells us where the tracks meet. Revelation 16, 13 says, And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are spirits of devils, working miracles, which go out to the kings of the earth and to the whole world, to gather them to the battle of the great David. Unto the kings of the earth. I don't say any of this with pleasure, and I'm not making an enemy of this man. He's doing what he was taught at a graveside by people who loved him, and most of the Christian world would do exactly the same thing in his place. That's not a comfort. That's a warning. Because Isaiah gave us one test, and there's no exemption written into it for people that we like, or that we voted for, or people who write beautifully about their grandfathers, grandmothers, to the law of the testimony.
32:11 If they speak not according to this word, it's because there is no light in them. The dead know not anything, and the ones that you love are not whispering to you. They are sleeping, at least proverbially. They are literally not conscious. And there is a morning coming when the one who conquered death will call them by name. You will not need a graveside, nor a veil, nor a vapor. You will be saved. You will just need to be there.